No, Snapchat is Not Shutting Down November 14

Since its creation seven years ago, Snapchat has been one of the fastest-growing mobile applications in the world. The mobile-messaging app, which allows users to send photos and messages to others for a select amount of time before they’re inaccessible, has over 300 million active users and became a publicly-traded company earlier this year.

So, when a rumor spread through social media saying that Snapchat was shutting down for good November 14, it was cause for alarm for some users. A post that’s been spread across social media platforms claims that Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel has decided to shut the app down “due to copyright and legal issues with Facebook, Instagram and Musical.ly.”

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Read the post below:

A post being spread throughout claims Snapchat is shutting down November 14.

However, it’s completely false. Snapchat will not be shutting down anytime soon. Snapchat’s Support team addressed the rumor on its official Twitter account November 6, saying there was absolutely no truth to the rumor.

Hi! Not to worry — this isn’t true 😜

— Snapchat Support (@snapchatsupport) November 6, 2017

Nope! That rumor is not true. Happy Snapping 👻

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— Snapchat Support (@snapchatsupport) November 6, 2017

The rumor appears to have started through a website that allows people to “prank and trick all your friends.” The website, Channel45News.com, prompts users to create their own false article and encourages them to spread it on social media.

Though there’s no truth to that rumor, there is merit that Snapchat suffered an outage for an extended period of time November 6. The support team said that “some Snapchatters” were having trouble with the app, adding that they were looking into it.

We’re aware of the issue and working on a fix🔧 Stay tuned for updates! ⚠️We recommend staying logged into your account.

— Snapchat Support (@snapchatsupport) November 6, 2017

The outage happened for a reason Snapchat hasn’t yet specified, and lasted for about four hours for most users.

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Thousands of people reported issues with the app, saying they were unable to send and receive messages and that it tried to refresh and ultimately ended with an error message saying: “Could not refresh. Please try again.”

The error message shown to some Snapchat users.

Snapchat is the No. 4 most-downloaded application on the iTunes App Store behind Instagram, YouTube and tbh. The application was released in September 2011 by several students at Stanford University.

The messaging app was the subject of a hack by an anonymous group on December 31, 2013. The hackers exposed about 4.6 million Snapchat usernames and phone numbers, publishing the information on a website.

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After the hack, the group released a statement saying its objective was to “raise public awareness” and put pressure onto the company to fix a security vulnerability.

Earlier this year, Snap, Inc., Snapchat’s parent company, made its debut as a publicly-traded company and raised more than $3.4 billion in its initial public offering. During its first day on the stock market, the stock closed at $24.48, up 44 percent from where it started the day.

If Snapchat’s rate of growth is any indication, it’s going to be here for the long haul.